Plight of Woodlands squatters
Tshwane municipality has been ordered to give emergency shelter in the form of tents to people forcefully evicted from an informal camp near Woodlands, east of Pretoria, at the end of July. View a selection of media reports on the subject.

A fractured nation: Operation Murambatsvina - five years on
A new report by the Solidarity Peace Trust follows up on previous research conducted by the trust in 2005/6, and builds on the narratives of the lives of particular families and informal settlements from 2005 to 2010. The story is a grim one, with many of the individuals involved now prematurely dead, and others living in unspeakable poverty. The four detailed case studies in this report illustrate the lives of extreme hardship that have driven Zimbabweans from one place of abode to another in the last five years. Download the full report [3.11MB]

Zimbabwean police torch informal settlement: rights groups
Human rights groups recently accused Zimbabwean police of setting fire to an informal settlement in Harare, forcing some 250 people from their homes. Amnesty International said police raided the settlement shortly after midnight on Wednesday 25 August, giving residents 10 minutes to leave their homes before setting the squatter camp alight. The group said many of the settlement's residents were victims of Operation Murambatsvina (Drive Out Filth), a 2005 eviction blitz that left 700,000 people homeless. Read the article [103KB]